Don’t ask why all this time I never spoke.
Wordless am I,
and won’t say why.
And silence reigns because the bedrock broke.
No word redeems;
one only speaks in dreams.
A smiling sun the sleeper’s images evoke.
Time marches on;
the final difference is none.
The word expired when that world awoke.

1.
I could draw poetry out of silence
with the patience of a fisherwoman
I have cut my circle in the ice
and wait.

2.
I want to find the courage to dive deep
beyond conception
to hammer diamonds from the glassy wall
such hard at meaning
to make transparent the opaque.
I want to trace with burning fingers
the unique and perfect pattern
of each frost flower
to wear a skin so thin
my blood’s heat will melt
the edge of ice
and make the inert flow.

3.
I want to write poetry with muscle
words that can’t be pummelled into submission
but swagger seeking across a page.
I want a new vocabulary for living
a grammar for contradictions
where mind and body rhyme
and my heart’s beat
sounds in the sea.